Ending the planning paralysis in NSW is crucial

The Trilogy project by Meriton at Macquarie Park.

The paralysis that we have in the NSW planning department must disappear at once.

Raising interest rates while the property market is weak must stop at once. We are bringing in people now and that is terrific. Increasing interest rates affects housing the most. Housing is weak, so stop this nonsense.

The paralysis in NSW Planning has been going on for many years. When things change, we must have laws that reflect it. People now buy apartments to use permanently not just for a few years. Therefore, council rules have to reflect it. Here the department agrees that things have changed but they are convinced that if they do nothing it is safer to get re-elected. That is complete nonsense and should not be accepted. We need rules which will allow growth.

In NSW we have a constant drop of production and people are leaving.

The myth of high prices and rents is rubbish. Our rents and prices have hardly moved in the last six years. Sure, when we had the virus prices dropped and have since recovered but in the meantime, costs went up, the councils demand higher standards. So static price growth with high costs means no one can build.

Our councils demand standards which we cannot afford. The only time that we can make money is when mainland Chinese come. But now they are not coming and in fact are leaving Australia because of problems in China. So, we can’t make profit. The only time we can build something is when there are some exceptional bureaucrats in control, but that is very rare and only applies to very few councils.

The plan of the federal government to build houses is only good if the details have been worked out. Until this is done it is of little help. The providers of funds they talk about are those that have never dealt in residential real estate.

We need more housing than ever before. The quickest way is to build apartments. We in Meriton build 2000 units a year and we would be happy to build 5000, but we can’t get approvals that allow us to make a profit. We are not waiting for financiers, we are not waiting for buyers or tenants, we are only waiting for the council to stamp plans that take into account costs.

Meriton founder and managing director Harry Triguboff. Picture: James Horan

Our planning department will not change. Many NSW ministers will not stand for re-election. But so far this has not been reflected in any change of attitude. The federal government must sit with us the developers and change the attitude. So far, we have not heard from the federal government. If we in Meriton succeed in providing more apartments others will follow.

Most developers employ people who worked in Meriton and we will fix the problem. We can bring more people than anyone else to Sydney.

Without building we will stagnate. And eventually the right people will come and things will improve, but we are ready now and should not wait. We have the best country and people but if we stop it will take a long time to improve. Just look at Queensland where the attitude is different. Buildings are going up and people move to Queensland.

We in Meriton built a lot in Queensland over the last 20 years. We build there continuously. We know their system and suggest that it is adopted in NSW. Other builders are now moving there too. So, between us it would be easy to use their system in NSW. The NSW government have sent their experts to Queensland many times but they refuse to change.

If we keep raising interest rates until we have a recession it will be even harder to improve.

Let others try the recession trick.

We should also point out that when prices are discussed units are not taken into account.

Today units are a huge part of our market. The reason I am so confident is that units can always be leased. Leasing is not strong in cottages. Leasing lends itself to apartments because there is constant observation of them which does not exist in housing.

And even though we build apartments which are meant for thousands, not only for the very expensive ones, the number of Australians buying is only 10 per cent of the total. So that is what I argue about. Town planning makes plans which we Australians cannot afford.

Harry Triguboff is founder and managing director of Meriton